


outer space in his inner ears

by bastigod



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anxiety, Gen, Introspection, M/M, minor unrequited ushisaku, the Sakuatsu is minor but it's there, written before ch 394
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23011240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bastigod/pseuds/bastigod
Summary: When Sakusa Kiyoomi was twelve years old, he woke up from a nightmare.Skin damp with sweat, curls plastered to his forehead, weak sunlight filtering through the blinds.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 20
Kudos: 229





	outer space in his inner ears

**Author's Note:**

> cw // mentions of mental health, (very minor) internalized homophobia, childhood trauma, sports injury. hopefully nothing upsetting but please be careful.
> 
> title from plastic 100c by sampha. please listen to this song at some point in your life i adore it
> 
> edit 6/22/20: this is very canon divergent as of Ch 394's release. i've made minor tweaks but will not be rewriting this completely lol.

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was twelve years old, he woke up from a nightmare.

Skin damp with sweat, curls plastered to his forehead, weak sunlight filtering through the blinds.

They say that talking about your dreams is one of the most dreadfully boring conversations you can have. We all pretend to care about other people’s dreams. You nod and grit your teeth and say “mhm” and otherwise completely ignore your co-worker every time he talks about zombies or showing up to a cocktail party in a hot dog suit. You only feign politeness because he’s willing to drive you to work but you’d really rather be sitting in silence on your phone reading a fanfic of whatever rare pair you’re hyper focusing on this week.

Sakusa Kiyoomi is a child but some things you just understand on a molecular level. So he didn’t question it when his father nodded and gritted his teeth and said “mhm” and stared down at the omurice on his plate. 

His nightmare of a car pulling out of the driveway and disappearing down the street. His nightmare of the clanking and metallic grinding of the garage door opening. His nightmare of a “I love you, I promise” whispered from a darkened doorway. His nightmare of a delicate brush of fingers in his curls and a soft kiss on his forehead. His nightmare of his mother coming into his room in the middle of the night. 

Sakusa Kiyoomi is a child so there are some things you just don’t understand on a molecular level. He should’ve questioned it when his father nodded and gritted his teeth and said “mhm” and stared down at the omurice on his plate. 

The car never pulled back into the driveway. 

Sometimes it’s not a nightmare.

* * *

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was thirteen years old, he had a panic attack. 

It wasn’t his first. It certainly wouldn’t be his last. He couldn’t remember what was upsetting him, he rarely did. 

He found his shelter on the floor of the bathroom. Desperately trying to even his breathing. Fingers scraping grout. Shivers racing down his spine. Wishing he could cut his entire arm off. 

There was a knock at the door. He thanked whatever gods may be that he locked it. 

“Kiyo?” If he ignored him, he’d go away. Another knock. Footsteps. Silence. 

His heart slowed as he stared at the carved wood of the cabinet under the sink. It’d been in this house for as long as he had been alive and probably much longer than that. Sakusa didn’t know. Sink cabinets weren’t high on his list of things to think about. But here on the floor, curled up in a tight ball, he noticed, for the first time ever, rot eating away at the bottom of the cabinet.

He weakly reached out to grasp the cabinet knob with his shaking fingers.

Inside was as followed:

  1. Half-empty conditioner that once belonged to his older brother. There were wild claims written on it that implied it would make their curls beautiful and shiny and bouncy and frizz free. Four months ago, his brother decided to shave his head and no longer had any reason for beautiful and shiny and bouncy and frizz free. 
  2. A book. Its pages crinkled and yellow and smelling faintly of mildew. Sakusa had read it cover to cover more times than he could count, relishing in the photographs of Greek statues depicting the myths written on the pages. 
  3. A sealed bottle of cologne, identical to the open one in the medicine cabinet. The same cologne that his salaryman father anointed himself with before his daily prayers to the capitalist gods. Sakusa couldn’t read the words. They were French, perhaps. 
  4. A tube of lotion that has been there since the sixth day of creation when god created the beasts of the earth and planted every green seed and crafted mankind in his image and abandoned skincare products in rotting sink cabinets. 
  5. A spray bottle of disinfectant. Economy size. Cuts tough grease and grime. Stainless steel, synthetic marble, glazed tile, linoleum, countertops, stovetops, appliance exteriors, sinks, floors, cabinets, tubs, and walls. Kills 99.99% of bacteria and viruses. 



As he laid in the fetal position on the floor, he thought of nothing except that 00.01%. 

When he finally willed himself up, he scrubbed his hands til the pads of his fingers wrinkled and his cuticles screamed. 

* * *

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was fourteen years old, he wanted to be someone else. 

He’d stare in the mirror at himself. Awkward. The long bones in his body yet to catch up to his too big feet and hands. Curls not beautiful and not shiny and not bouncy and not frizz free, no amount of conditioner could change that. Eyes too dark to be written about in love songs. Two birthmarks on his forehead that physically protruded and squished down when poked. He read online some people’s moles grew thick black hair, so he’d become hyper aware of them and the location of his tweezers ever since. 

He thought about her sometimes when he looked in the mirror. She had been tall, fingers long and graceful. Hair beautiful and shiny and bouncy and frizz free. It used to brush the top of her collarbones and framed her face like a lion’s mane. He wondered if it was longer now. He immediately regretted thinking about it. 

The flat iron sizzled like eggs in a frying pan as he ran it over his curls. Is that a sound it should be making? Should it smell like burning hair? It had been in the linen closet since she left. Perhaps it was broken. Perhaps he wasn’t supposed to be doing this with wet hair. 

With the curls pressed out, he realized it was much longer, frizzy layers falling past his chin. 

The other boys at the youth camp noticed. 

“Kiyoomi-kun, what didja do to your hair?” One of the insufferable black-haired hooded-eyed twins said with an insufferable smile. 

“It looks like hell.” The other insufferable black-haired hooded-eyed twin added, accessorizing his statement with insufferable dead eyes. 

“The curls suit ya better.” 

He went home and immediately threw the flat iron in the trash. 

* * *

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was fifteen years old, he fell in love with a boy. 

Not love. Rather, whatever the equivalent to love was to a kid who never learned what love meant. Admiration? Infatuation? Obsession? 

The love of his short, inexperienced life was sixteen and taller than a sixteen year old reasonably should’ve been. Dark brown hair, skin tan, eyes solemn, hands clean. The living equivalent of a poster of an idol on a brick wall, ready to be projected upon by Sakusa and every other person who harbored a pointless crush on him. 

People didn’t fall in love with Ushijima Wakatoshi for what was in his brain or in his heart. They fell in love with the way his left hand curved around a volleyball. 

Sakusa was guilty of this too. 

Ushijima would never and could never love him back, for he loved volleyball and loved his father and he loved little else. He certainly didn’t love sullen-eyed anxious boys. 

Boys weren’t supposed to love other boys after all. They were supposed to love bright-eyed beautiful girls, ones who smelled like lotions that haven’t been rotting in a bathroom cabinet for a decade. 

He jotted that down on the list in his brain labelled “Things Wrong with Sakusa Kiyoomi.” Item number 32. Everyone he knew treated him like he was a freak of nature. 

He was starting to believe he actually was. 

Maybe, just maybe, the real Sakusa was ripped from his bed three years ago on the night she left. And that the boy that remained was merely a changeling left behind.

* * *

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was sixteen years old, he decided he hated his name. 

Akira. Shouta. Daiki. Motoya. Tetsurou. Keiji. Suguru. Osamu. He knew four different boys named Tsubasa. 

Sakusa was alright, if not a little boring, he supposed. 

_Forever early._

His father would always smile and straighten his collar proudly when he explained the characters in his name. After all, he’d never once been late to work. Sometimes, Sakusa wondered if his father had some sort of supernatural ability to predict train delays and precisely nothing else. 

If he could’ve predicted anything else, there were plenty of mistakes in his life he could’ve easily avoided. Such as getting married. Or having children. 

_Forever early._

Those characters were meaningless to Sakusa. After all, the only thing in his entire life he was ever early for was the development of his anxiety disorder. 

In the rest of his life, he’d decided he was never late and never early. He was forever precisely there when he was meant to be. Nothing more and nothing less. If he learned anything at all from the Tolkien novels on his bookcase, it was that. 

His teachers and coaches were never too impressed with that rationale when he showed up entirely too late. 

Kiyoomi. 

For the last ten years of his life, his school teachers would hesitate when they reached his name on the class roster. Their breath would hitch as they read aloud the characters, which was never a good sign. “My, what an unusual name Kiyoomi-kun.” 

An unusual name for an unusual boy. 

On the day when he opened his eyes for the first time, tears tracked down the ghost he called his mother’s cheeks. _Welcome to the world, Kiyoomi,_ she whispered. A nurse cooed. Sakusa screamed. He never wanted any part of this. 

If they named him Akira or Shouta or Daiki, would he have been a normal boy with a normal name? 

No. Probably not. 

_Holy servant._

It was a first name more suited to a Shinto priest, perhaps. One dressed in a crisp white joue, fingers sprinkling purifying salt, eyes crinkling in a smile reserved for the kami that inhabited his shrine. Not a teenager dressed in a hideous green and yellow jacket, clutching a volleyball in bandaged fingers. 

There was hardly anything holy about him. He served nothing but jump floaters. 

The gods he worshiped were the patrons of volleyball and of bleach. His devil was 00.01% of bacteria and viruses. 

An insufferable blonde-haired hooded-eyed twin called him “Omi-kun” once during the All-Japan Youth Training Camp. 

He didn’t hate that.

* * *

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was seventeen years old, a tiny meteorite fell from outer space and bonked him on the head. 

Hours after the game, the details were recounted to him by his coach. Head still hazy but alert enough to hold a conversation. Not that that mattered, Sakusa didn’t listen anyway. He instead stared at the holes in the drop ceiling of the examination room. Half of his brain devoted to finding shapes of animals, the other half desperately wanting to fall asleep. 

His concept of what happened was hazy at best. The memories long gone, if they were ever there in the first place. 

“Do you think he’s concussed?” A voice asked. Was it a teammate, a ref, a coach? He didn’t know. His eyes were fastened shut, his grasp on reality was weak. “Dunno.” Another responded. 

They snapped open. 

Blurry floodlights blazed into his corneas. There was blood in his hair. It snaked down his forehead. 

“What a pity if he is.” Another voice spoke. “He had such potential.” Their dark silhouettes pinned him to the floor like a preserved butterfly. “His volleyball career is probably over.” 

“Omi-kun?” An insufferable blonde-haired twin whispered, close. “Are you okay?” His eyes focused. Dark silhouettes vanished, replaced by soft brown eyes beneath furrowed eyebrows. 

He wasn’t. 

He couldn’t respond. 

One insufferable hand of the insufferable twin touched his face, the other slipped between his back and the floor. There was a firm press between his shoulder blades as he was leaned forward, the hand on his face keeping him steady. The bowl of soup in his cranium sloshed. “I’m sorry.” Insufferable lips opened, speaking softly. “I know ya don’t like being touched.” 

Sakusa wondered silently, in his haze of existence, if there was a patron god of insufferable twins he could worship.

* * *

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was eighteen years old, he got lost. 

An automatic click followed by a metallic sound came through the receiver of his phone. “Kiyo? What’s up?” 

Komori Motoya spoke with an uncharacteristically dry tone. Sakusa figured he was probably at training, covered in sweat and wondering why his cousin was calling him. They’d drifted apart since graduating high school. After all, Komori had all the responsibilities of a professional volleyball player, and Sakusa had all the responsibilities of an overworked college student. 

“I’m lost.” 

“Kiyoomi. We’ve had this conversation before.” Sakusa missed carefree high school student Komori. Not busy, sighing Komori. “I can’t make your life decisions for you. I don’t know what you should major in.” 

A month before graduating, he’d stared at the list of degree programs until the impact crater in his brain ached. It happened pathetically fast back then. Komori had swiped the list from his hands and read the majors off one by one. 

Pre-Med? He thought of the communal pens in the lobby of every doctor’s office in the history of mankind, and a shiver ran down his spine. Business? He thought of his depressed father making a daily pilgrimage to the shrine of his capitalist god, praying to find meaning in a place long wiped clean of it. 

“I know.” 

He’d narrowed the list down to Computer Science, History, Literature, Archaeology, Physics. But that was as far as he got before the semester began. He was still undeclared, slogging through gen ed classes. 

“And it’s up to you if you wanna play volleyball again.” Komori said. A bit of a lilt returned to his voice, which was almost enough to make Sakusa smile. “Look, Kiyoomi, I’m sorry but I gotta go. You’ll figure it out.” Another click, then silence. 

Sakusa sighed, staring at his home screen blankly. 

He opened up the navigation app on his phone. 

He’d just wanted directions.

* * *

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was nineteen years old, he was summoned to an unfamiliar office on campus. 

He’d never even been inside this building before. Some students went to admin for every little thing, but the extent of his complaints were to housing for their dubious elevator cleanliness. 

“It says here you were admitted to this university on a volleyball scholarship, correct?” Sakusa stared at the photos on the office’s walls. Old photos of a track star who only vaguely resembled the large man in a too tight white button up and tie in front of him. There was a loud shuffling of papers followed by a “That’s when you say ‘yessir’, son.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“You’re not playing volleyball.” 

“No, sir.” 

“Do you intend on playing volleyball again?” 

The office fell silent again. Only an overly loud ticking clock. Sakusa wondered how this man was able to put up with it for hours. Maybe he listened to music or radio broadcasts of baseball games. Maybe he was a quote unquote normal person who experienced existence in a normal way and could actually tune out white noise instead of hyper focusing on it. 

Sakusa wished he could relate. 

“Son?” 

He didn’t have a proper answer. 

He’d spent a year of his life under the meteorite’s control. The fissure in his hairline was sewn up and forgotten about until it was nothing more than a snaking white scar. The doctor allowed him to return to practice two weeks after the Interhigh, provided he didn’t develop new symptoms. If only he’d been that lucky. 

The impact crater beneath his skin haunted him long after the headaches disappeared. It wore a different face every day for half a year. 

He’d lost the remaining six months since then to anxiety. 

Wanting to return, desperately. Fear spiking every time he heard the squeak of gym shoes against a shiny wooden floor. Pretending he was focusing on his studies and that’s why he hadn’t come back yet. 

He was miserable. 

Volleyball was one of the only things in his life that made sense. 

That made him happy. 

“Yes.” 

A practice jersey was shoved into his hands.

* * *

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was twenty years old, he remembered what glory felt like. 

If he could only hear a single sound for the rest of his days on earth, it’d be the satisfying thump of a volleyball against the floor of the court. 

Last time he’d heard that sound, it had been preceded by the thump of his shoulder against the floor of the court. He doesn’t remember hearing either of those sounds. 

(If he could hear two sounds, it’d be the thump of a volleyball against the floor of the court and the uncharacteristically soft apology of an insufferable twin touching him. But that wouldn’t have been his answer back then. He hadn’t thought about any twin, insufferable or not, in a very long time.) 

Tonight the final thump of a volleyball against the floor of the court was born at the apex of his right hand and died inches from the fingertips of a bone-tired libero. 

His fingers curled instinctively. Some muscle memories could never be forgotten. 

He heard whoops and hollers and screams in one ear. A waterfall of blood rushing in the other. 

They’d won university nationals. Something somewhere shot off confetti, fluttering metallic paper in his school colors. In a normal frame of mind, he would’ve considered it excessive. Just another mess to clean up. 

But he wasn’t thinking about confetti or cleanliness or nationals or teammates or his anxiety. 

He stood there in his own silence, staring down at his stinging right hand. 

That clenched fist was the only victory that mattered.

* * *

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was twenty-one years old, he graduated. 

He wished someone out there in the entire goddamn universe would have warned him about all the questions he’d have to answer. 

“What are your plans after graduation?” His aunt, during an uncomfortable one on one dinner she’d insisted on while in town. Ritsu-chan from History of Eastern Civilization II as she copied his notes. Four of his teammates (Yuuki-kun, Ariyoshi, Sawa, Nagasato) in the locker room. 

“Do you really think you can go pro?” A boy from the Statistics class he took several semesters ago and long since forgot his name (useless information was fed to the meteorite as a treat.) His roommate Keito, from the couch, as he scrubbed dishes. Nicki-chan, a foreign exchange student he sometimes went to museums with in a completely platonic way (she loved bright-eyed beautiful girls and not sullen-eyed anxious boys, to Sakusa’s relief.) 

“What did you major in?” The woman who swiped key cards at the front desk of the cafeteria. Six different cashiers at the konbini off campus. (How did they have so many employees? Why did he go to the konbini so much in the first place?) A stranger sipping an iced coffee in the library. 

“What are you gonna do with that?” Everyone in the entire fucking universe. 

He never attended graduation. 

A crowded room full of thousands of graduates, thousands of family members, thousands of bacteria and viruses. He couldn’t eradicate the 99.99% of bacteria and viruses from his seat. He couldn’t eradicate the 99.99% of bacteria and viruses from the dean’s hand as she handed him his diploma. 

He'd considered sucking it up. Then they told him he couldn’t wear a mask. 

A few months later, his diploma appeared unceremoniously on the front stoop of his father’s townhouse. 

It was then, immediately tossed, still in its mailer, onto a shelf in his closet.

* * *

When Sakusa Kiyoomi was twenty-two years old, he fell in love with another boy. 

On a night like this, you’d pray for an inky black night sky. One where if you squinted hard enough, you’d notice brushstrokes of the Milky Way. A shooting star would dance across the sky in a blink. You’d turn to the person next to you to ask if they saw it. They didn’t, they were watching you instead. 

“Omi-kun.” 

But this wasn’t an anime. Sakusa could only make out Polaris, Orion’s belt, Arcterus, and a random smatter of stars he never learned the names of. The rest were obscured by the ever-present orange glow of Tokyo’s light polluted sky. The insufferable twin next to him stared down at the plastic cup of beer in his hand and not at the sky. Or at Sakusa. 

“Mhm?” 

They were once surrounded by their teammates. Familiar laughter and cheers paused only by _kanpai_ s and the clinking of cans. But the team one-by-one abandoned Meian-san’s patio, opting to continue the celebrations inside. Except for one. It didn’t take a degree in rocket surgery for Sakusa to know what the team was trying to do. He wasn’t stupid. 

“Ya know they’re bettin’ on us, right?” 

An insufferable laugh came out of an insufferable twin. He smiled one of those insufferable smiles where he smiled with his entire insufferable face. Somehow, somewhere, Miya Atsumu had managed to crawl his way under Sakusa’s fingernails. Crusted like dried blood on the forehead of a concussed wing spiker. As resilient as 00.01% of bacteria and viruses. 

“No shit.” 

He’d changed since high school. He’d finally learned how to tone his insufferable hair and it no longer resembled a tube of karashi. The last traces of baby fat had ceded from his insufferable face. And his mid-youth crisis was well underway now that he needed to learn how to be an insufferable person and not just an insufferable twin. 

“Wanna make Meian-san lose some cash?” 

Another insufferable laugh out of an insufferable boy.

“Was that a confession?” 

A pause. 

“Only if the answer is yes.” 

A sufferable set of teeth forming a sufferable smile. 

“Yes.” 

A brush of sufferable fingers on his.

“Then I s’pose it was.” 

Sakusa was okay with that.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hey, thank you for reading.


End file.
